Tapestry Weaving
Weave-Along: Week Three, Tapestry Techniques
This week we’re going to show you some basic tapestry techniques that can (but don’t have to) be incorporated into your cuffs.
(Just a note… when this is posted, Elena will have gotten married yesterday so please be patient with us if you write to us and we don’t respond today.)
Definitions:
Selvages: The four sides of your piece.
Warp interlock: When the two ends of weft meet at a warp thread and wrap around that thread before changing direction.
If you’re interested in better explanations of tapestry techniques or want to learn tapestry, we suggest you purchase a book. Kathe Todd-Hooker’s book, “Tapestry 101” and “Tapestry Weaving” by Kirsten Glasbrook are both great books for beginners with lots of detail and easy-to-follow instructions.
Tapestry techniques we’re trying today: Pick and Pick, Wavy Lines, Hatching.
A short explanation of pick and pick and wavy lines:
Both of these techniques require that you alternate the weaving of two different color threads. In pick and pick, you alternate them one after another. In other words, thread one, thread two, thread one, thread two, etc.. Wavy line technique requires that you weave thread one twice, thread two twice, thread one twice, thread two twice. Pick and pick produces vertical stripes, wavy lines produces the effect of wavy lines. These two have in common the necessity to deal with the selvages in a slightly unusual manner. You will have to manage these two threads in a way that will guarantee the selvage thread has enough weft around it. In the first case, depending on the position of your threads you will have to wrap one of your weft threads around the selvage thread in order to guarantee complete coverage.
In the second case, the top thread will pull the second thread and by doing so the top thread will cover the selvage thread twice. These techniques take some time to master but are well worth the effort. If you’re feeling intimidated, it is by no means necessary to use these techniques in your cuff but we do suggest you try the hatching technique (described last) at the very least.
Pick and Pick:
In our example, we’ve used magenta and a golden yellow to begin our pick and pick. We alternate the colors thereby creating vertical stripes. In other words, weave the yellow thread once, and then the magenta thread once (making sure to change sheds every time you weave a new thread) then the yellow, then the magenta, etc… Follow the pictures for a visual of what we did:
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First line of yellow |
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Second line of magenta (refer to earlier in this post to learn how to deal with your edges). Remember to change your shed every time you bring a thread across. |
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Notice the beautiful vertical stripes emerging |
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Changing the color to purple |
Follow the pictures to see what we did:
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The first pass through with green |
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The way hatching works: The two threads will come meet each other at any place within the tapestry you would like. The threads must be woven toward each other. They will then wrap around a common warp thread and head away from each other in the next shed. These two colors will dovetail into each other. A lot of other techniques can spring from this one including adding additional colors. For now and for such a small piece we suggest you keep it simple and just use two colors.
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The yellow and blue thread heading toward each other. |
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Wrap the two threads around the common warp, change sheds and head in opposite directions. |
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A clear visual of the threads wrapping around a common warp. |
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See how the dovetailing is beginning to reveal itself! |
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You can see how useful this technique can be! |
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